Everything at one place

India is a country with its own sets of rules. Standardisation does not always work here, especially in the big newspaper houses. How does CCI tackle the issues and challenges as they may appear for individual clients?

 

To begin with, India has many languages. Kim Svendsen is unfazed about the challenges. There are no issues, Svendsen says, “CCI Newsgate relies on Unicode/double byte character sets. We support Kanada, Hindi, Bengali and several others.” How about digital platforms, such as web, mobile and tablets? “We have created Newsgate specifically for publishing content across all platforms,” Svendsen says, adding that the CCI workflow system also supports multi-edition newspapers. “This is a core functionality.”

 

Coming to lack of standardisation, what kind of initiatives does CCI take to train the relevant staff? “We supply all documentation and generic training material needed and we often help plan and execute training. We also offer consulting in business development, drawing on experiences from our projects all across the globe,” Svendsen says.

 

The flagship product that CCI offers is the Newsgate, which integrates everything from the big picture to the smallest caption. Svendsen says Newsgate gives the newsroom the necessary tools and technology to be on top of the content creation and production. “If you want it, Newsgate offers total transparency to let all colleagues collaborate on all content from all desks and all titles. If you desire, desks and even individual stories can be private and only visible to a few. Not just content, the staff also has the complete overview of how different content items are used on various media platforms,” Svendsen says.

 

Svendsen explains, “Newsgate enables everybody access to all content, making the newsroom transparent. However, blocking access to some content is also easy. From Newsgate you assign tasks to photographers, reporters, graphic designers – everybody in the newsroom. The person receives a text message, an e-mail and desktop notifications.” 

 

Content is king

An astronomically big amount of content is a reality today. Svendsen says CCI knows that handling content is a delicate task and it works towards making it as smooth as possible. Here comes Story Folder, the heart of the Newsgate. This is where everything starts, says Svendsen. “When you start on a piece of content, a folder is automatically created for you to collect all content related to that story. The Story Folder is your common workplace for everything that relates to the story, image, texts, videos, graphics, etc. The Story Folder is also the place where publishing decisions can be made. Select content items for different media and publish it immediately,” Svendsen says.

 

The CCI system works with the belief that content is the king. You can choose to focus on only one piece of content, or you can zoom out and get the big picture of all your content,” explains Svendsen. In Newsgate, it’s easy to input content and distribute it to all media platforms. One can design content specifically to one channel or can post the same content to all channels at once. Apart from publishing on platforms like tablet, online, mobile, TV and radio at the click of a button, Newsgate is where a newspaper house manages all its print content. Right from getting photos, text, graphics ready for layout and onto the page with easy to use and efficient template-driven design tools or total freedom to design unique pages with Layoutchamp.

 

Future Ready

The CCI system comes future-ready. Google Glass, smart watches or whatever new platform may be available, Newsgate is built from the ground up to be open and platform-neutral.

 

Svendsen says the CCI Newsdirector tool is like the Swiss army knife of the Newsgate system. This advanced and yet simple to use content creation tool is where the news is born. It lets the newspaper house preview content packages on different media.

 

Newsgate is an open architecture using web services and a set of standard APIs, so integration with various other production systems, planning systems, etc is fully possible. Newsgate can be implemented in large group setups, like the Gannet Newsgate installation in the US, where 83 newspapers, including the country’s largest paper, USA Today, runs on a single Newsgate system. However, it is also perfectly suitable for single newsroom use. The workspace in Newsgate can be configured individually. One can chose to set up the system so users see many or few options and distribute the “views” automatically.

 

Svendsen insists that Newsgate is a great investment. “In addition to the gains inside the newsroom and in flexible and fast publication, there is also a great opportunity in consolidation. Having one central data centre reduces the need for IT staff at individual titles and increases security and stability,” Svendsen says, adding that the Indian market is growing and the CCI’s focus on serving India is undisputed.